


Flight

by thequeenofslurking



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Character Study, Isolation, Running Away, Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-01-18 01:39:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12378219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequeenofslurking/pseuds/thequeenofslurking
Summary: They've fought for years and they're all so tired. One bag each, Spencer decides. Hanna rallies, Emily argues and Aria picks over her room.Cross-posted from fanfiction.net





	1. Chapter 1

**AN: I still don’t own anything. This is going to be a multichapter, but slow updates. PM me with questions; other details on my profile.**

**Flight: Prologue**

She’s tired.

It begins one evening after Christmas, some snowy January evening, after Mona dies, and that’s when Spencer of all people freaks out, because A has killed someone who could still be useful. She’s not even thinking about how Mona was offering to help herself and the others, but Mona surely knew who A was, and could’ve made a deal with A.

And normally she’d be all delving into this, analysing and digging into the details, and she _does_ make an effort.

Once the police have swept the Vanderwaal property thoroughly and the funeral has been held, Spencer goes there. She brings muffins, sits with a pale Leona, politely drinks coffee and slips upstairs. It’s the oldest trick in the book, pretending to need the bathroom, but she hasn’t the energy to be annoyed at herself. 

So she looks around a dead girl’s room, and the room has been restored carefully, the work of a loving mother, suppresses the guilt she feels at looking here, and doesn’t touch anything. It feels weird to be here on so many levels, and she feels like she should expect the other shoe to drop at any moment – maybe A rigged something, maybe Leona will come upstairs for something and see her here. It’s illicit and she suddenly wants to cry.

Instead she stiffly hugs the woman, who looks just a little grateful for the hours reminiscing.

(see, mona wasn’t a monster. she was just a girl)

Something about the petite woman in the doorway sticks in her mind as she drives away, and she doesn’t figure it out until she’s retrieving her dinner from the microwave and pouring a half glass of wine because her parents are out and she needs to take the edge off.

It clicks, because she can kind of identify. One woman in a big house where her daughter was murdered, looking small and tired and lost. She gets it, she’s in a big house and she’s sitting on the couch alone eating dinner because the table is for family dinners and Melissa is overseas, she’s pretty sure.

And suddenly her appetite is gone, she surges off the couch with fresh indignation because A still has her secrets, still has secrets of everyone in this damned town and hell, maybe it’s her old friend Alison. Before she quite realises it, she’s upstairs with a duffel and trying to decide what to take.

No – first to close the curtains, even though the room has probably been bugged. She shuts the world out with heavy material, strips the duvet off her bed when she’s dissatisfied, and flings it over the curtain rail. It bends under the weight a little and she’s almost certain it will come down, but she can’t bring herself to care.

Clean shirts, just T-shirts will do. A heavy jacket, and a less-heavy one. Jeans, and a jumper. Clean underthings and a couple pairs of shoes. Her mind is addled, a little foggy from the combinations of the afternoon, and she drops the bag to the ground.

 _Call someone,_ is the verdict she reaches. Toby once told her to call him if this ever happened, but she wants to be out of town because for all she knows he still has some grudge against her friends, and this is the one time she wants to limit information.

Instead, she sends out a short _S.O.S_ to the three others, subsides on her bed to wait.

It’s not the first snap decision she’s ever made, but this might be the best.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Thanks to nick2951 for the feedback** **J.**

**Chapter 2**

Her hands tremble as she folds and packs, not troubling to smooth out the creases or refold something that isn’t quite up to her usual standards. She regrets sending out the text now, regrets that it will probably bring her friends here while she wants to get away and while she can lie, she isn’t quite the best of them. Right now she feels wired, too wound up to think properly and she’s acting on autopilot as she folds and packs, the repetition doing nothing to calm her like it usually would. There’s a stack of cash in her desk drawer, and more strewn around the room, all different denominations. Jacket and jeans pockets, handbags, tucked into books – she sweeps the room of the cash, not pausing to count it and stuffs it haphazardly into a wallet. There’s enough there for the first night in a motel, at any rate, and she’s grateful that she had the foresight when all this began to start up an emergency cash fund. It’s taken over a year of sporadic small withdrawals at ATMs, but right now she’s confident that this will get her moving.

No technology, she decided this as soon as she was getting out the duffle. She’d be a sitting duck if that happened, too easy to trace and she doesn’t want to think what A might do to track her down. She wouldn’t put it past A to trace her, just for the sake of tormenting her, and people will do a lot for money, she doesn’t want to risk it. It’s too wearying, too much to deal with all the time. Her friends feel the same, she knows: she can see it in the chipped nails that go unnoticed, the sloppily done homework finished within an hour because there was some bigger crisis, the faint lines of concealer around the eyes. In herself, it’s the hands shaking from too much coffee, too many sleepless nights spent trying to unravel the mystery and ending up painted into a corner.

Whoever A is, they are a master at what they do, and the longer this goes on, the better they become at it all. The better they become, the less chance Spencer or anyone else has of unravelling it, because there’s still gaps in the knowledge and it’s harder to tell what details are important and which are innocuous.

The text has not gone unanswered, but her friends are busy, and it’s such a relief that she could cry. She can go now, zips up the bag and hefts it over her elbow. The weight of it is not substantial and for a minute she wonders about more things, but no, there’s no time.

In the kitchen, she dithers over leaving a note. Her parents will be out of town for a few more days, and Melissa is still overseas. None of her family will notice she’s gone until it’s too late, and by that point she could be on the other side of the country. Hitchhiking seems to be the best thing for it. Her own car is out of the question – just as easily traced as a phone, and too conspicuous.

No, no need to leave a note. Her friends will be the first to notice, if A doesn’t beat them to it.

At first it had seemed like the best idea, going on the run with her friends, but on second thought, she’s better off alone for now. Maybe in a few days she can reach out, give them directions to her location, but right now she has to go and establish a safe place.

It’s dark, too dark, and the streetlights are off as she makes her way down the driveway. At this point she hasn’t dared to bring even a torch, and already it’s clear to her that her paranoia has reached new levels, but she can’t bring herself to care because paranoia is probably half of what’s keeping her alive at this point.

The rest, she doesn’t think about.

Instead, she makes her way over the pavement, feeling the familiar cracks in the ground and keeping close to the shadows. Doing this must be what it’s like to be A, always skulking in the dark and never revealing yourself. The insight would usually make her shudder, but instead she’s numb to it, pushes away the thought because all _her_ A activities were done in daylight, if she remembers – she probably doesn’t, but it’s not like she’s desperate to remember. Her footsteps feel too loud and she’s sure that she’s highly visible to anyone who might be looking outside, but that’s not important.

 _Lea-ving. Lea-ving. Lea-ving._ It becomes a tattoo that she leaves on the ground and echoes in her brain, one step, two steps, repeat.

She focuses on the rhythm. If she thinks about anything else, she’ll falter. If she falters, she knows she’ll turn back.

Turning back is not an option, not now.

She has to burn her own trail, has to let her trials be of her own making, because she is so damned tired of having some anonymous coward dictate her every move.

And so when she reaches a payphone, she takes the opportunity to add reading glasses and screw her hair into a knot out of her face, swipes haphazard makeup onto her face. It’s the best disguise she can muster. A tiny compact mirror tells her that she looks clownish, but she hurries anyway for fear that someone will crash a car into the phone booth at any moment.

It’s the first break she allows herself, she slots in the correct change and dials for a taxi because she can’t keep walking in the dark.

So she gets in and commandeers a lift to the bus station, pretends to herself that she isn’t silently repulsed by buses because if she wasn’t driving herself she would be driven around in a luxury car, all polished metal and leather and all that goes with paying top dollar for a car.

She’s safely on a bus within minutes of reaching the depot and does her routine sweep of the surrounding area, but there’s no hoodie that she can see, no suspicious dark lurker. She doesn’t relax though, remains stiffly seated and she’s sure that she’d gain a few curious looks if there were more people on the bus. Letting her guard down would be foolish and she’s learnt how to tune out the background noise of her surroundings, knows how to block out the music that comes, tinny, through the speakers, knows how to shut down enough so it’s her and her thoughts and a quiet awareness of everything important humming at the front of her mind.

The bus leaves the depot and she allows herself to relax just a bit, lowers her head to a thin paperback and says nothing.

It feels like her first victory in so many months, and she allows herself to savour it just for a few minutes.

So much for academics and extracurriculars.


	3. Chapter 3

She’s desperate for company. This is the second thing she notices when she’s jolted awake at a bus terminal in New York.

(it’s the most obvious choice, but does that also make it the least obvious?)

Keeping her head down, she scurries into the crowd. Hours of poor sleep and maybe too much caffeine have left her just a bit wired and it’s all she can do to not keep looking over her shoulder. It’s become instinct now, honed from months of knowing someone was watching her.

The first thing she notices is the crowds, the students traveling in packs and the dozens of solo businesspeople and her own backpack makes her look fairly inconspicuous – just another college girl crossing states for whatever reason.

The crowds are a certain kind of security, because they mean she’s just one face among thousands, but it’s only when they thin out that she really relaxes. This way she can see everyone around her.

It’s been hours since she last spoke to anyone beyond a few muttered requests for the necessities – bus passes, a quick “excuse me” as she jolts into someone.

 _Don’t apologize,_ she reminds herself. It’s neither the time nor place to be polite; all the manners her parents drilled into her aren’t needed here. New York is a busy place, too busy for people to pause and apologize.

(the mental image is an interesting one, people everywhere freezing in their tracks to apologize for jostling someone, but she doesn’t stop to dwell on it.)

Her pace slows as she nears an advice bureau, tempted to go in and ask for information – directions to a hostel, another bus out of town – then quickens, taking her straight past as she decides it would count as an unnecessary interaction. There are libraries around, bookstores and one of them is bound to have a travel guide.

0o0o0o0

The girl in the bookstore is too friendly and it’s enough to put her on edge. Maybe it’s an A-trap, maybe the girl was planted there to gain intel. She wouldn’t put it past A.

Even so, she smiles fakely at the girl and breaks her silence pact to mutter “Just browsing” when she’s offered help. The travel books are packed in at the back of the store, and she does look around her to make sure no-one is watching her selections. She’s fairly sure she’s safe – this is standard, and she considers slipping the book into her backpack.

 _No,_ she rationalizes, _it’d be just what A wants._

Instead, she memorizes the page (resists the temptation to tear it out) and leaves with another fake smile at the girl.

She doesn’t dare stick around – in her current paranoia it feels like she’s just made a friend, or maybe an enemy. Right now she can’t tell who is supposed to be who, the crowds which felt so secure before now feel imposing and threatening. Friendliness feels mocking, good manners feel like a taunt and she almost wishes for another A message because then she’d know where she stands.

A few streets over is another bus stop, and she doubles her pace to get there.

Washington sounds promising, but according to the information some of the buses cut through Philadelphia, and the irony almost chokes her. The woman behind the counter looks pleased, as if she’s just solved some difficult problem, and she doesn’t have the heart to tell her it’s useless. She picks another state, realizes for the first time that she’s sort of trapped herself into a corner by starting in New York as she might not be able to avoid Philadelphia, and decides on Michigan.

The journey is long enough that she feels more secure with every hour that passes, though she pretends to be collecting up her belongings from the floor as the bus crosses Philadelphia, brushes it off as an unzipped bag and returns to her seat with a wry smile.

Michigan feels like her kind of state, and the Grand Rapids has a certain layer of anonymity to it. She can settle here, at least for a few days and reach out to have the others join her. It might be better to have each girl meet her individually, in a different city in order to throw off the trails.

Already feeling a bit more comforted about her situation, she starts drafting a letter to Hanna. Hanna is the most impulsive, the one who will hop on a train to meet her best friend in another state without telling anyone – it’s also protection because Hanna isn’t always the best at keeping secrets. This way she doesn’t have to worry about Hanna doing something rash when the police get involved in the case of three missing girls.

The café is closing though, she can’t stay here forever and write. This time, she takes the time to ask after a place to stay. Her voice feels rusty after being used for the barest minimum for about three days.

The café owner is kind, the sort of woman who addresses every customer with some sort of endearment. “There’s a hostel a few blocks down,” and she’s outlining the route on a napkin with a blotchy ballpoint. Her slightly lined face is warm, and she seems like the sort of woman to offer a strange girl a ride to her destination. It feels a lot better to be taking directions from a grandmother-type, and so she tucks the napkin into her jacket pocket, spills a few dollars into the tips jar. The woman – Rose, according to her name tag – seems surprised, as if unexpecting of some kind of payment for her help.

She doesn’t linger to chat.

It’s quicker to leave while she isn’t attached, doesn’t have the woman’s life story and offer of a place to stay. It’s easy then, to slip out and make her way to the hostel, sneakers already beginning to feel worn out.

There are blisters forming on her heels, it’s a reminder that she is alive. She is here, and she gladly kicks her shoes away.

The letter to Hanna doesn’t seem right somehow, it feels too full of code and allusions, too tangled up. She tears it up, and for good measure buries it at the bottom of her backpack. Her next three attempts don’t turn out any better, too wordy and too complicated and in the end she writes a few short sentences.

_Sorry. Had to get out of town. Meet by the Louisville Free Public Library, 2pm, three days from now. Just you. Tell no-one, and destroy this. –S.H._

The next morning she buys Hanna a ticket, folds the note around it and drops it in the nearest post box.

She alternates her hours reading and rereading the same book, sleeping or counting patterns in the curtains. Beyond buying and sending Hanna’s ticket, she hasn’t gone anywhere, done anything else, and it occurs that she ought to be on a train to Kentucky now, start scoping out somewhere to stay. Her money won’t last forever, she knows this, and already she’s beginning to feel a little anxious at the thought of what’s left. There are still two tickets that need to be bought after this, still hostels to sleep in and food is a top priority.

The loneliness feels even more crippling now.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Hanna gathers the last of her things together, hands shaking as she does.

All day it’s been a game of will-they-won’t-they guess, will-she-won’t-she tell? and it’s every cliché ever but she feels like the pocket holding the ticket and letter from Spencer is burning up. She’s deliberately picked a bigger tote today, the better to hold makeup and an iPad and –

She derails the train of thought. An iPad could be a tracking device, they can’t afford for her to board a train with a potential tracking item in her bag. Instead, after lunch she slips it into her locker with the rest of her books.

Aria and Emily have been subdued all day. Spencer has been gone almost a week and none of them know where she is – well, Hanna thinks she might but she couldn’t say with any degree of certainty. She’s been trying to distract herself with her wardrobe, tries not to imagine her mother’s reaction to finding her bedroom stripped of clothes and a house for one. Tries not to imagine how Caleb might handle it.

Lunch is silent, the only sounds are drink bottles being capped and food containers opened or closed. Emily looks at her, that sympathetic gaze that could get anyone to spill their problems, and to circumvent it Hanna swills her coffee, burns the roof of her mouth for her effort and sighs.

“I’m fine,” she promises, but she isn’t completely because now she feels like the weakest link and maybe this is why Spencer is reaching out to her first. Maybe this is all part of some clever plan Spencer has devised to get them all out of the line of fire, and it’d be just like her to lie low and plan her next five moves.

“I’m fine,” she repeats, “why shouldn’t I be?”

Almost too late she realizes she’s about to begin rambling, the kind that could and does spill a person’s secrets, so she hops up from the table, makes an excuse about a lip gloss left in her locker.

(she can’t lie like Aria can, so well that anyone would believe her. can’t lie like Emily can, all naïve eyes and bright honesty because why wouldn’t you trust such an open face to tell you the truth?

all her lies are the ones wrapped in glitter and come with the occasional one-liner, so she can’t take the risks, has to get out before she becomes a liability)

So she counts the hours, comes home and swaps around the clothes she has packed because she can only take one other suitcase. Makeup is the last of the luxuries she is allowing herself, and anyway it might come in useful if she decides she needs a sudden disguise.

Her mother is on a date with Ted, _don’t wait up_ scrawled on an old flyer tacked to the fridge. It’s just a waiting game now.

The daylight is still too bright, still feels like it could scorch your eyes and she would feel completely conspicuous of leaving the house with a suitcase. She paces, up and down the stairs. Braids her hair, then unravels it and straightens it until it lies flat, brushes it until she’s sure the ends are splitting. Swaps clothes again, changes her attire to something that might have a chance of being less flashy.

(black clothes are too obvious, because they look like the person wearing them is up to no good, and anyway she got rid of all her hoodies years ago)

She settles for workout clothes and cobbles together a cover story of clothing donations, tries to figure out on a paper map how long the drive to the Philadelphia train station will take. Cleans the kitchen, throws out old food that’s barely recognizable.

Wonders if this is how Spencer felt before she fled.

Eventually it’s dark, the sky purpling and then blackening before her eyes.

The car engine sounds too loud as she starts it, the car itself feels like it’s going way too fast as she eases her foot onto the accelerator. This was how she first felt when she learnt to drive, like at any moment her foot might slam onto the accelerator and send her crashing – wild, out of control.

Music thrums through her ears, almost in time with her heartbeat and it freaks her out, reminds her too much of that one creepy story Mona told her, so she snaps off the sound. Problem is, now the silence makes her think every shadow is after her, every noise is someone chasing her.

This time she does floor the accelerator, grits her teeth against the images of her mother coming home to an empty house, of Caleb hacking every computer he can to find her, of Emily and Aria as they realize another one of their quartet has vanished. She finds an old CD in the stereo, jabs it in and listens to the screaming vocals. It’s nothing she’d ever listen to, normally, but right now when she doesn’t want a beat that reminds her of her heart, doesn’t want to be able to think clearly, it’s perfect.

The train station is there, welcoming and possibly the best sight she’s ever seen. She winds a scarf through her hair, tying it back to make it even less distinctive, ditches the car keys and pulls out the ticket like it’s a talisman. The atmosphere is quiet and a little creepy in the middle of the night, with few people around. Not many people want to travel at night, she guesses, only the ones who have urgent business or are going on the run.

Then again, this is both.

She drums two fingernails on the hard seating, not caring if the nails weaken or break. This isn’t the time or place for vanity, and she almost wants to weep with relief when her train is called.

 _Don’t look around_ , she reminds herself. It’s hard to break the habit that by now is instinct, honed from months of being watched, but she forces herself to keep her head down and pretend that she’s just squinting against the bright lights of the station.

She wishes Spencer had picked a day train for her, then she’d at least have an excuse to wear sunglasses.

It doesn’t matter though, she picks a seat in the middle of the train

(Spencer’s voice rings in her ears, matter-of-fact about how you should always sit in the middle of the train if you can because then you’re better protected if the train is in an accident somehow, and the memory is reassuring)

unravels the scarf from her hair and leans her head against the window. There’s no chance of sleep right now, not tonight as she thinks of the big empty house and the locker at school and coffees clustered around a small table. Tonight she is a traveller, an anonymous girl with a suitcase and she could be _anyone_.

Unless A has managed to hijack public transport, she’s pretty sure she’s secure.

The journey is a blur of nightlights and night cityscapes and skies that are either starry or overcast depending on where she is.

(doesn’t matter; there are enough stars on the ground)

Rosewood and Philadelphia vanish behind her, then they leave the state altogether and she relaxes entirely.

By daybreak she is entranced, all the passing sceneries have melted into one giant scene and she doesn’t know what’s what anymore. Doesn’t know what’s real, doesn’t know where she is and her ears have learned to tune out the announcements made over the intercom because otherwise it’s too loud, she feels she might shatter if she listens to them properly. A grouchy train conductor taps her shoulder and she hands over her ticket, tries not to squirm while he takes his time examining it.

“Three more stops,” he tells her gruffly and she mutters a thank-you.

The train halts and she stumbles into the bright light, finds the directions Spencer wrote out for her. True to Spencer, the notes span a page and she’s grateful for the effort Spencer put in: it means that they might be in the same area for a while. Long enough to get settled, maybe; long enough to be able to get some money together somehow and work on bringing the others away from Rosewood.

The library is swarming with students, people taking advantage of the good weather to sit outside and read or work. It’s the perfect place for Spencer to hide, to blend in, and she can’t tell one person from another. The thin bangle watch around her wrist reads 1:50pm, and if she knows Spencer at all the girl will be early.

Someone appears in front of her, knowing not to come up behind her because her reflexes are sharper than they used to be. She blinks away the last of the sunlight – even behind her sunglasses the glare is bad – and Spencer is there.


	5. Chapter 5

Spencer stands before her, unpolished and tired and fraying at the edges. Without meaning to, Hanna’s eyes spot the jacket cuff with loose threads hanging down, the faded patch of leather from where Spencer has no doubt scratched it away – why, she isn’t quite sure, but she can just picture it.

She doesn’t quite know if she wants to hug Spencer or hit her, settles for stepping back a few paces and breathing, and she can see the understanding reflected in her friend’s eyes. This routine isn’t new to them, isn’t unusual when they have to break bad news to one another and still hope to cling onto friendships. In the end they settle for hugging, hold on a little longer than they normally might and when they step back, they don’t move for a good five minutes.

 _It’s the relief,_ Spencer tells herself. It’s getting company after not having anyone to talk to for what feels like several months, and it’s the relief of knowing Hanna is here now, no longer in Rosewood to do impetuous things that would risk their safety even further.

 _It’s the relief,_ Hanna tells herself, and though she’s not one for pausing to introspect deeply, she does recognize what this would feel like for Spencer. Recognizes for herself the relief of seeing Spencer standing before her, steady and calm. Spencer was never the sort of person to trash a room, never the type of person who would break until pushed to her last tipping point. Spencer is here though, and right now they are all the other has got. She digs a little deeper this time, introspects and decides she’s most of all grateful to Spencer.

They link hands, holding on loosely as though to anchor themselves to the ground, and Spencer tugs Hanna along to a tiny café. It’s what the term _hole-in-a-wall_ was coined for, a thin door leading to a small room no bigger than some living rooms; empty, except for the one barista who also appears to be handling food orders and gives Spencer a quick nod of recognition.

“I’ve been coming here a few days, getting the lay of the land. They don’t mind if you come in all day. Food’s decent, coffee’s average,” Spencer speaks clinically, pitching her voice low and Hanna listens quietly. This – being on the run – is beyond her knowledge, beyond her skill set.

They lay a few dollars on the little table that serves as a cash register and the money is collected, “endless coffee this time?” is called out by the barista and they’re quick to agree.

“She means for the rest of the evening, anyway. You’d normally be shooed out in about five hours if you don’t order food. Ordering food, they let you stay until about midnight. I don’t think they’re doing this to make a profit, somehow.”

Hanna’s eyes take in the room more thoroughly this time, Spencer crosses the room to place food orders, and she sees what that means. The room is shabby, chairs and tables mismatched like they were picked up at various yard sales. Faded wallpaper decorates the walls, though there are random splotches of paint like someone tried to brighten it up and gave up midway. It’s not the cleanest dining place she’s ever been in, or the sort of place she’d ever go – there’s grime on the window, and the carpet could use a thorough cleaning, but there’s something comfy about it.

Spencer returns, eyes her over the rim of the coffee cup she’s draining, and she lets her gaze flick away before catching her up on Rosewood.

“A went silent for a few days; I guess trying to catch up with you. Your parents said something about hiring a PI. Aria and Emily went to Caleb and tried to track you online.”

There’s something of satisfaction in Spencer’s expression and she sets her cup down without a sound. “Were there any messages at all?” and Hanna knows it’s a double-edged question.

“No. A sent one message about how information on you would earn us a favour, and then stopped. I didn’t tell the others I was leaving, so I don’t know if they had any messages to pass along to you. We’re the only ones who know I’m here.”

This time satisfaction does manifest on Spencer’s face and she smiles warmer now, signals the barista for a refill.

“We’re in the clear, then,” she whispers and Hanna only barely catches it.

Evening falls around the city as they finish eating and leave with another few notes on the table, Spencer drawing out a sheet of paper with a map on it. Hanna studies it over her shoulder as she traces all the lines, not knowing where it’ll take them, but Spencer folds it back up and slides it into a recycling bin as they pass it.

The motel they reach is dingy and tired. From the outside, it looks worse than the diner had, and Hanna baulks at going in. Digs her heels in slightly as if that will stop her from going in, appraising the worn paint and crookedly-hanging sign. Not for the first time since she left, she misses her home. Misses the clean fresh paint and carefully-placed numbers on the front door. Spencer spins around, that understanding back in her eyes, and crosses the few feet between them.

“I don’t like it either, but it is cheap. It’s warm inside, clean and there’ll be space for us both.”

The reception desk makes it clear Spencer has oversold clean by at least two days, and the college-aged boy behind the counter grins at them both. It’s an icky feeling, one that makes her want to jump in the first shower she see.

“One room?” he drawls out, and Spencer grits her teeth at him. Hanna prods her in the back, then steps forward, looping her fingers around Spencer’s wrist and leaning in to her. The boy’s eyes don’t miss a thing, and he hands them the keys with a smirk and “enjoy your stay.”

 _Not likely,_ she can practically hear in Hanna’s thoughts, but they traipse up to the room and drop their bags. Hanna moves to claim a bed for herself, but there’s only the one. _At least it’s not a single,_ she decides before snatching up toiletries and showering.

She comes back to find sandwiches in the kitchenette and the TV tuned to the evening news, and it’s clear that this has become routine of a sort. Only the quantity of the sandwiches gives away the fact that there’s been a change in routine.

“I’m thinking we stay a couple of weeks. I used to trade free work for a free room,” Spencer comments during one of the ad breaks, and Hanna doesn’t feel she can do anything other than agree.

“You don’t pay?” she wonders later, and Spencer shrugs.

“Not always, not if I can help it. Makes the money go further. It’s a finite amount, you know,” and her eyes look playful when she says this. In response, Hanna finds her makeup bag, the one she’d taken pains to hide, and hands it over.

“I don’t think lip gloss will help,” she says, but she’s already unzipping the bag, uncovering the stack of notes Hanna had buried in it.

They pool their resources, agreeing mutually that Spencer will handle the cash.

“Are we going to bring Emily and Aria here as well?” she asks right before Spencer falls asleep.

“Not _here,_ to Louisville, no – but yes, we’ll have them come to meet us. Different cities, different times.”

It doesn’t sound like the most solid of plans, but Hanna’s here, with Spencer, and they’ve survived this long.

She falls asleep feeling oddly comforted.


	6. Interlude

Lunch is awkward, quiet.

They sit together, as they have done every lunch period for months, but someone who doesn’t know them would think they weren’t really paying attention to the other. Emily nibbles on her food while Aria drinks a tall coffee, half-heartedly ruffling the pages of a thin paperback. Sometimes, she looks up to say something, but the words stick in her throat. It doesn’t feel like there’s much left to say, with half of their group missing. They’ve already caught up on the few things they usually discuss, and now she feels self-conscious trying to find something new.

Other times, she catches Aria’s eye, smiles wanly and receives the same sort of hesitation in return. Any by-stander might think they’re new friends, still in that stumbly, shy phase before things click. For once, she doesn’t feel like there’s anything to say. Without Spencer, without Hanna things have become unbearable at school.

It’s like losing a piece of solid armour; she misses the way both girls’ presences kept people at bay, or at least socially smoothed things out. Misses the way Spencer could intimidate someone into staying clear entirely, misses Hanna’s habit of saying the wrong thing and softening an abrasive atmosphere.

Aria clears her throat, looks embarrassed to even make this small sound, excuses herself from the table. “I left a book in my locker. I’m just gonna…”

It’s a lie and they both know it, but the way the sentence hangs in the air isn’t something they want to acknowledge. Instead, Emily nods, drags up a semi-convincing understanding smile and a “see you later” that goes mostly unheard. Her words sound weak even to her own ears, her voice diminished by the fact that there’s no-one left to hear it. Alone, Emily slides the paperback over to herself and considers it, considers leaving it in Aria’s locker, flips it between her hands while deciding if she’ll take it anywhere.

Decides against it. It’ll make a good excuse to stop by and talk to Aria later.

Aria hates feeling like she’s running and hiding from someone who’s supposed to be her best friend, but she’s got to get away from the stifling atmosphere. Two of her best friends have vanished; A is clearly desperate to know where they are, and she’s about desperate enough to capitalize, earn a favour that would protect her and Emily just a few days more. All she needs is time. She just needs to figure out where they are.

She sags against the wall of the classroom she’s slipped into, feeling anger and jealousy stabbing at her. _Am I not worth protection; what about Emily? Why do they get to run off and leave us to take the heat?_

Some small part of her knows she’s not being fair, knows that Spencer was most likely the instigator of this and that it’s probably all some grand plan to bring them all to safety, but she’s one of two sitting ducks right now and that means the odds of A coming down on her head are twice as high as before. Trying not to glance nervously around, she withdraws her phone, begins a text to try and throw A off the track. If she can just guess the correct place, try to place where the others are, she can buy a week or two: long enough for her and Emily to pack, to disappear.

She stops mid-word. America is a big place, but there’s still a chance that she just might guess where her friends _are_ and send A straight to them. Instead, she holds down on the delete key until the message field is blank and heads off to her next class. Her anger has mostly ebbed away, leaving a sort of apathy in its wake.

The rest of the day slips by in the sort of mood where time is fluid, moreso than before. One class passes in what she’d swear is five minutes; the next goes unnaturally slowly.

Finally the bell rings and she sees Emily at her locker, looking like she wants to stop her for some reason or other. Today, she doesn’t feel that there’s time; she shoves in earphones and ducks into a knot of other students she can barely name. The human tide sweeps her out the door and she drives a bit too fast, rushing home as if there’s some reason to be there.

At home, she bars the bedroom door, pins up a jacket in the window to obstruct anyone’s view.

Clutter, there’s too much of it. She drags a duffel out from her bed, chucks it haphazardly into the centre of the room, folds a few of her least interesting clothes into it. T-shirts and jeans are the things that won’t be missed right now.

Feeling slightly more settled, she spins in a circle trying to decide what else she should take. Her hands hover over one item, flutter over a second and bypass a third. Eventually, she snatches random pieces of makeup and dumps them into a travel kit. Throws out a few old things she doesn’t need, kicks the bag under the bed in frustration.

It’s a start.

For the second time today, she grabs her phone to begin a message, this one to Emily and stops midway. There’s the remembrance that the phone is most likely bugged and that texting Emily may as well just be sending a direct message to A.

Anyway, she remembers as she looks at the time, Emily will be swimming.

There’s a knock at the door, and she instinctively scrambles to straighten up her room, make it look like nothing is amiss. Doing so, she knows, can have just the opposite effect, but she tries it anyway. Emily is waiting in the doorway, and for a moment Aria is convinced that her thumb slipped and pressed send, but she silently drags the door open wider. It’s not the warmest welcome ever, and she can see it by the way Emily tentatively steps inside. There’s a book splayed in her hand, the other hand wrapped around her car keys.

Emily is perceptive, she knows, so she calculates her words before asking after swimming and tries to remind herself that she does care. Really, she does – it’s just that swimming isn’t so interesting to her, but she nods politely and tries to laugh in the right places.

They speak in half-truths now, the kind that shroud the truth just a bit more, and feel the distance that spans more than three footsteps widening.

As she stands to leave, Emily glances around the room. Something about it doesn’t feel quite right, and she can’t put her finger on it. The same knickknacks that are always there are in their normal places. There’s a pile of books on the nightstand, makeup on the dressing table, and the wardrobe is crammed. She frowns, shrugs it off as a headache and makes her excuses. Something that looks faintly like relief flicks in Aria’s eyes, but she brushes it off with the same nervousness she’s felt around her for the past week.

It isn’t until she gets home that she realizes there was less stuff around than before. The piles of books were diminished; the makeup and wardrobe less cluttered. Her steps slow down with the realization that Aria’s been squirrelling things away, as if she’s preparing to go on a trip.

There’s no point in asking, she knows – she’s learnt this lesson twice already.


	7. Chapter 7

Emily sinks onto her bed, mind putting the pieces together. There’s a text from A that’s hours old, a very simple _Where are they???_

She hasn’t answered, because she hasn’t the foggiest idea. It’s been on her mind to pick a random town or city, open an atlas and throw a dart at it, but what if that _is_ the place they have gone to? Logically, she knows it’s unlikely. With close to twenty-five thousand towns, cities and counties (and this is just the _known_ ones) she knows they could have disappeared anywhere in the country.

Her chances of picking the one place they went are slim to none, and she still doesn’t want to risk a decoy guess.

The phone pings again. _Time’s ticking down,_ A tells her, adds a gif of a clock counting from three hours. Emily picks up the phone, weighs it on her palm. If she picks a place, how long before A goes there? Travel alone takes several hours, but what if they have minions there – they seem to have an unlimited line of credit, they could easily wire someone a few thousand for intel and never get their hands dirty.

(not that _that_ was ever a problem, she thinks wryly, remembering a car crashed into her living room)

She wavers back and forth. Even if she picks, Spencer and Hanna could have false identities. They could be presenting themselves as anything. A third message pops up.

_College is expensive. Tell me, and there’s $25,000 in it for you._

A doesn’t even bother signing off nowadays, just writes the messages like they’re pretending not to threaten. With two girls left that they can threaten – they discovered days ago that all electronics were left behind, making contact impossible – they go about it in a slightly-less menacing fashion. She supposes it’s some kind of psychology trick.

(a wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a wolf)

She throws caution to the wind, pecks out _I heard Spencer once saying she wanted to go to Memphis_ and hits Send. Her throat feels tight, hot with bile, and she wonders if she’s going to be sick. This doesn’t feel like nausea, but sometimes it’s hard to tell.

(it’s a bitter pill to swallow)

Memphis is populated-enough that it’ll take at least a week to comb through the various towns and locales, and she pointedly doesn’t think about the odds of her friends being there. Her mind circles back to Aria, Aria who she saw stuffing a packed duffle bag under her bed and looking relieved when Emily pretended not to notice. Her eyes feel wet when she thinks about the implications – they called Aria. She wonders when the girl will disappear, will it be day or night? Where will they bring her? Maybe they will supply a ticket so she doesn’t have to buy her own possibly-tracked one.

In the morning, Aria’s tyres are punctured, one neat wound in each with an ice pick or similar blade. She calls Emily for a lift, finds the folded note tucked under a windshield wiper and addressed to Emily.

She wonders if Emily tried to sell A information to keep them happy. Wonders if it was good or bad – realizes, it’s both, depending on who you are.

They drive to school in silence, neither girl wanting to break the tenuous peace, but she slips the note into Emily’s hand once they park. She reads it, rolls it into a fine tube and slides it into her smallest jeans pocket. _Don’t give me false information again. You’re getting off easy this time._

(lesson learned)

People have noticed they’re missing half of their usual group. Instead of being a tight-knit clique, they’re just two girls cast adrift. People ask _where’s Spencer, I need her notes_ or _where’s Hanna, I haven’t seen her around lately._ Study girl and party girl go missing, people are bound to notice.

A decides a new tack. Tries Aria, because she’s always been a good liar, always knows how to pretend one thing and do just the opposite without ever missing a beat. _Tell me where they are_ pops up on Aria’s screen right as she’s cracking open her stories notebook. She replies instantly _I don’t know, neither of us does_ and hopes it’s enough.

It isn’t, so she writes it again. I don’t KNOW.

_I don’t know. Neither of us knows._

_We don’t know._

_We weren’t told._

She types variations of the theme and sends them all, hoping it will change something. There’s no reply.

In the morning there’s a box on the doorstep, inexplicably heavy and addressed to her. Aria sticks it in the back of her wardrobe, promises she will deal with it later, and runs out the door. School passes in a blur and she doesn’t think she takes in one piece of information all day. Emily is away at lunch, practicing in the pool, so she hides out in the library and stealthily rips corners off a sandwich in a hidden nook people go to when they don’t want to be seen.

The box, when she opens it, contains a photo album. She flips through photos of her and her friends hovering around Ali’s grave, shovels in hand; her, packing a bag as recently as two days ago; her and Ezra when they were first hooking up – dated, too, so her age can be made all the more apparent.

The rest of the photos cycle through similar themes, the occasional break-in, a minor lifting of some piece of information. Some of them are crimes, and altogether they’re definitely enough to be damning. Damning enough to get her expelled from school, to prevent college admissions, to get her on the outs with her family.

She sits back on her heels, knowing there’s no point in burning them. A has copies, she’s certain, but seeing the last couple of years of her life splayed out like that is jarring. When she’s pocketing something that might come in useful to solving the various mysteries, it’s never _seemed_ like theft. Never felt like a crime. They were always able to justify and defend the action of snagging a key that didn’t belong to them, of sneaking into a cabin that they didn’t live in when the residents or owners weren’t home.

In the end she feeds each photo into the flames, tosses the empty album with its stupid captions into the rubbish once every page is torn out. Scribbles over the inscribed _Bet you don’t want this going public_ with the thickest permanent marker she can find, until her hands reek of black ink and she feels like her nose is burning from the fumes.

Spencer disappeared ten days ago. Hanna followed five days later. Aria calculates that she or Emily should be called soon.

 _Not much longer now_ , she tells herself.


	8. Chapter 8

Spencer and Hanna are settled into something that passes for a routine in Louisville when Hanna cracks. One day when Spencer is working, mopping floors and Hanna is baby-sitting, she makes her excuses to the kid she’s looking after. Stammers a story about train timetables and jumps on the family computer, logs on to Facebook and scrolls through.

Dozens of notifications pop up and she skims over the list of people currently online, clicks open a name to start a chat.

Realises what she’s doing and stops cold.

That afternoon when Spencer comes back to the motel, she twists her fingers around each other, watches as the blood flow to her hands alters with each rhythm. She tells her what happened, how she just wanted one quick peek, just to see what was going on, and Spencer’s eyes darken until she looks like a storm cloud.

Hanna can almost hear Spencer’s mind whirring over this, running through the implications of a new sign-in email being generated to her account, triggering something in her emails that could find her. She remembers on occasion, signing into her emails from a new device – sometimes they include physical, geographical, location.

Spencer turns away and whips through packing her bag, and Hanna does the same in silence. She wonders if Spencer still wants to travel with her.

“Let’s go, _now_ ,” is all that Spencer says, and Hanna follows quietly as they hurry out the motel.

(they’ve perfected the art of hurrying without looking like it)

She slips the roll of cash from baby-sitting into Spencer’s bag and hangs back as she studies the departures board. The train station is mainly deserted at this time of day, people still in work or school and not needing to be anywhere else just yet. At the sight of the cash, Spencer seems to relax a bit, and she buys two tickets to Wyoming, adds a third that will go from Philadelphia to Wyoming.

They sit on the train and Spencer deliberately doesn’t reprimand Hanna. They’re already running, already wrenching apart their routines to get out before A lands.

Both girls keep a vigilant watch for anyone with a hoodie, and they relax when they don’t see any.

(Hanna wishes she’d deleted the account when she had the chance)

Spencer withdraws an envelope from her bag, writes Emily’s name and address, and begins the note to bring her away from Philadelphia. It’ll be harder to do, Emily is the most loyal. She’ll want to stick around just for the sake of not leaving Aria on her own, Spencer thinks, but she turns over in her head what she’s going to say.

They take it in turns to nap, Hanna’s head on Spencer’s shoulder and Spencer’s head leaning against the cold glass. Neither girl makes mention of the discomfort, though Spencer is tempted to mention how she used to do this when she was traveling alone – used to curl herself up as small as possible, trying to fit her body under a coat or jumper that didn’t quite have the length for it. She’s tempted to fill this in as a story for Hanna, a piece of her history that she doesn’t share with anyone else – changes her mind, because it’s not going to do any good.

She writes on the paper, _Hanna’s safe. I’m safe. We miss you. I’m planning to bring Aria away soon. Meet us at the –_

And she cuts off there because she doesn’t know where yet. Doesn’t know much about Wyoming beyond there’s a university and museums and libraries.

She leaves the rest of the line blank and carries on writing. _We’ll be there at midday, you don’t need to bring much more than a backpack. Cash, if you want to bring it. Destroy this letter._ Wraps the ticket in the page and secures it in a book.

At the train station, she shakes Hanna awake and grabs a handful of tourist brochures from the stand, sifting through to find a good neutral meeting place. The National Museum of Wildlife Art jumps out at her, and she writes it into the space with a couple of notes that there should be a bus or something nearby.

The quiet that surrounds her and Hanna is a bit awkward. They’ve only had each other to rely on for days now, no-one else to buffer them when they clash. On any other day she might have chosen to call Aria first, make use of how well the girl can lie when needed, but she’s working in some kind of reverse system. Aria’s lying abilities are better served at home, where she can convince people that everything is just fine, pretend to not know what’s going on around her, ignore the whispers as she disappears into another book.

Hanna doesn’t have that ability, and Emily has always been the more neutral liar. It made sense when Spencer was thinking about it, but now her mind feels scrambled. She locates a post box and drops the letter in, jittery with sudden nerves. Maybe she should have created a dummy email, scrambled the trail five or six cities away, but then she’s reminded that she isn’t that good at technology.

Their cash is already running thin, and she hopes Emily will come.

(Emily is kind of a wildcard, in this case. Spencer is testing her loyalties, poking and prodding and asking which one matters most)

Already, Hanna has migrated to be a few paces away while Spencer breathes in and out, trying to calm her nerves. There’s a community corkboard, so she guesses the town they have landed in is pretty small, and Hanna tears a strip off a flier seeking a baby-sitter. It’s actually less casual baby-sitter and more short-term nanny, and Spencer finds a waitress spot. All cash-in-hand, all discreetly off the books, but dodging financial records is just one more thing to add to their list of misdeeds.

They walk in companionable silence to a youth hostel, invent a story about taking time off college for a road-trip, and pay extra for a room that they don’t have to share with six others. Spencer counts through the money, shaky fingers and furrowed brows giving away her worry at what’s left. In one situation it might be a lot, but if they don’t get the cash jobs they need it’s going to be very little very soon.

They’ll need two rooms, once Emily arrives – that’s not going to be for another week though, and she slouches on the bed, wanting to just go to sleep. Opposite her, Hanna is surprisingly bright-eyed and talking on a borrowed phone to the woman hiring the nanny. Spencer shuts her eyes and lets Hanna’s voice drift over her, going in one ear and out the other.

She thinks about bookstores, and good coffee, and watching documentaries when she feels like it. _I’ll lie down just for a few minutes,_ she promises herself.

When she wakes up there’s a note on the pillow and it seems that Hanna’s already gone off to earn some cash. There’s a hum of noise in the background, but the hostel itself is generally empty. Her head feels fuzzy, cotton-wool light, and she realizes she’s been running on adrenaline since Hanna joined her, hasn’t slept in days trying to force herself to adapt to new, new, new surroundings that much quicker.

Hanna will understand if she sleeps, takes this time out for herself.

(she double-checks the locks and tries to trap the window before sleep takes her)

Sleep comes quickly but restlessly. When Spencer wakes five and a half hours later she’s unrested, eyes raw and gritty with sleep in the corners. It feels like she’s spent the past days staring into computer screens with no rest, and when she looks in the mirror she can see how worn she looks.

(worn out, worn down, it’s all the same)

She feels like a zombie version of herself.

(she gets up anyway, pushes herself to move, steals some makeup from Hanna’s bag and pretends she doesn’t feel ghoulish)

Maybe it’s time for new identities.


End file.
